Use of unmanned aerial system for the characterization of the surface reflectance distribution function

This work addresses the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) characterization by means of MAIA multispectral camera onboard an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). The proposed procedure relies on the design and execution of UAS flight plan for multi-angular acquisitions, which can be automatically repeated over different land cover types. Then, the inversion of the RossThick-LiSparse (Ross-Li) BRDF model is pursued in order to retrieve the fundamental parameters, allowing the complete characterization of the considered surface in terms of reflectance distribution for each band. A key point of this work is the challenge we face related to the development of an optimum strategy for the collection of ground-based dataset for BRDF model inversion.